


Scars (and what they prove)

by rex101111



Series: Sword, Fan, and Horn [3]
Category: Guilty Gear, 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia
Genre: Baiken Tries To Be A Mom, Discussion of Past Child Abuse, Found Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Scars, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:07:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21885703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rex101111/pseuds/rex101111
Summary: Old wounds bring back old memories.Baiken talks to Eri about scars.
Relationships: Baiken (Guilty Gear) & Eri (My Hero Academia) & Mito Anji
Series: Sword, Fan, and Horn [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1144079
Comments: 11
Kudos: 10





	Scars (and what they prove)

**Author's Note:**

> Another fic for Eri's birthday! And also another Mom-ken fic! Been a while since you saw one of these huh? Truth is I have plenty of idea for these three but never really had the chance to sit down and write them down, so I thought this would be a wonderful opportunity.
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

Every time Baiken notices something new about Eri, she is further convinced that her decision to stab Chisaki Kai between his beady little eyes a minute after meeting him was the right one.

It started out with the obvious, the way she slammed into her legs in the middle of the street, running so frantically she didn't even look at where she was going. How she shook in fear as he came up behind her, calmly and slowly stepping towards her. How she ran behind Baiken's legs shivering like a leaf in the breeze.

The way he _spoke_ to her, voice cloying and weightless like rotting wood, his hands beckoning her over less like a child and more like a misbehaving animal. He called himself her father, her his wayward daughter, and Baiken could have smelled the bullshit coming out of his mouth from ten towns over.

She could barely remember what her father even sounded like, but every inch of her coiled up in disgust as he spoke, soft words carrying an arsenic-sweet voice as Eri looked at him like he was the devil himself, this man who would dare call himself a parent.

By the time Eri clutched at the fabric of her hakama with a trembling plea of, "please…don't leave…", Baiken had made up her mind.

She knew a bastard when she saw one, she knew when she was opposite someone who needed to die _right now._

As things settled down and she, Anji and Eri were able to travel with a minimum of fuss, she began to notice smaller things about the young Gear. Things that made her clench her teeth and breath through her nose to stop her temper from raising too high.

For the first few weeks, Eri visibly flinched back whenever she or Anji raised their hands in her direction, and the look on Anji's face when he put together the reason why in his head gave her pause. His face was the picture of directionless anger, utterly explosive and completely impotent in it's intensity, for a quick, endless moment, before he breathed through his nose and smiled for the little girl and went on like nothing happened.

Eri wouldn't accept food unless you practically shoved it into her hands, acting like she wasn't hungry at all, she was fine, really. She wasn't cold, or hot, or tired, or uncomfortable unless you pushed her to admit it.

Overall she never acted like the little girl she was supposed to be, instead she took every precaution she could to seem as little of an annoyance as possible, anything to avoid being a burden.

She tended not to spare a thought to someone after she had killed them, but Baiken couldn't help cursing out that bird faced bastard to rot in the deepest hell pit they could find during a long night of drinking months into traveling with Eri. He taught her nothing about being a person, about straightening her spine and looking people in the eye, this man who had the _gull_ to call himself her parent, even as a lie, it made her sick. Made her angry. Made her _useless._

But it all paled to the _big_ thing, the one mark from that man Anji and Baiken couldn't seem to wipe away no matter how hard they tried. All the other habits, she was slowly learning to do better, speak up about wanting to eat at a certain restaurant, asking for a dress, those things were workable, things she might learn to stop doing.

The bandages on her arms? Those stayed, and not the Gear Maker himself would be able to convince her to remove them for anything short of a bath or to treat a wound. Even then she would cover as much of her arms as she could, and asked for people to look away as she undid them.

Long sleeves, coats, anything to hide those scars that Baiken only managed brief glimpses of when Eri wasn't paying attention. The look of intense shame on Eri's face as she looked at her bandaged arms dug a pit in Baiken's stomach she had no idea how to fill.

Not that she was any better with her scars, hiding the slash across her eye and burying her stump in her sleeve and under her weapons. She wanted to say something to the girl, but her usual rough handling of situations would do her no good here, she knew. She needed a gentle touch with Eri, in nearly every aspect.

Too bad her "gentle touch" was _woefully_ out of practice. She found herself lamenting that fact as they stopped at a forest near a river to make camp, Anji setting up the tents while Baiken handled the fire and food, and Eri sitting near the riverbed, washing her face from the grime of the last few days of traveling.

Every so often Eri would stop to look at her covered forearms, biting her lip before she went back to what she was doing. Baiken watched her out of the corner of her eye, and felt more than a little listless. This wasn't a fight to win, she knew that, it was something bigger than just another enemy. She took on the responsibility of taking care of this kid and she can barely even think of what to say to her.

She pokes the flame with a stick, her scowl deepening as the fire jumps up slightly at the intrusion, crackling irritably at her before settling back down. An owl cries out somewhere deeper in the woods, leaving only thoughts to bounce around between her ears. Baiken found her eye drifting back to Eri, now simply dipping her feet in the cold water with her back turned.

"Stare at her any more intensely and she's bound to catch on fire."

Baiken whipped her head to look at Anji, eye narrow and sharp as she caught sight of his knowing smile, "most people who sneak up me end up wishing they were." Her mutter only earned her a raised eyebrow, so she huffed and went back to the fire, focusing on the eye of the flame, trying to figure if she can put the food to cook and ignore Anji more efficiently that way.

"She's been quiet today." Anji continues, as if speaking to the air, decidedly ignoring Baiken jabbing the crackling camp fire more harshly than needed, "more than usual, that only happens when she has something on her mind she has no intention of sharing with us."

Baiken stops, looking at Anji with a suspicious eye, "where do you figure that?" She grumbles, something sticks in her throat at how easily he seems to read Eri, "we've hardly known her for three months."

Anji chuckles and shrugs, "kids aren't that good at hiding their habits yet, our little Eri is not much different." She tears her gaze away from the fire to look back at her, hugging herself while looking up at the sky, toes still dipped in the cool lake. "…this time is a bit more worrying, she barely said more than two words at a time since this morning."

Baiken wants to bite back with an _I know_ because she's been trying to figure out a way to get Eri to _talk to her_ all damn day and her head aches too much to focus on her failure further but chokes on it, her hand tightly gripping the wet branch, the thin bark breaking apart under her fingers.

"She's been looking at her scars."

The stick shatters into splinters in her grip, her face impassive as she opens her palm to let its pieces fall into the fire. She reaches for the fish she and Anji caught earlier and impaled on debarked branches to bury one end in the dirt near the fire pit to cook, finally leaning away from the licking heat as she finishes. "She's always looking at her scars."

"Not like this." She knows this tone, this steely nudge in his voice when he plants his feet and refuses to budge. "Baiken, something is wrong and you know it." She breathes a curse under her breath and looks away. "Don't tell me you intend to just sit there and let her fight this on her own."

"You calling it a _fight_ means you don't know you're talking out of your ass." She meets him with her own bite of steel and is a little glad he leans away from her, "I've been trying all day, she won't…even look at me."

They both look to the ground for a moment, before they look up at Eri's back one last time, one of her arms in front of her face, the moon shifting over the trails her scars made on the skin, Eri's shoulders jumped in a barely visible sniff, and she hugged her knees to her chest, taking her feet out of the water.

Anji sighs, "maybe…" he starts, uncertain, and then he moves his eyes very meaningfully towards the stump of her right arm, "maybe if you give her something to look at…"

Baiken raises her eyebrow at him, and another lump forms in her throat. "Why in the _hell_ would I-?"

"Why do you think she isn't talking to either of us?" He gave her a moment to answer, and when she didn't he went on, gesturing with his hands, "because she doesn't want to _bother_ us with it, like she's been doing since the day we met her, the most she ever asked for was that kimono and we practically had to twist her arm so she would admit to wanting it _._ "

Baiken bites her lip, remember what became of that kimono, bloodied and torn and tossed not a week after they bought it.

"Not to mention we might not even know what we're talking about if we try." He rubbed his chin thoughtfully, adjusting his glasses, "we never _did_ find out what Chisaki was planning-"

"Does it matter?" She snapped, the mention of that man's name raising her hackles, Anji knew better to mention corpses to her unless he wanted a reaction out of her that involved a sword, "whatever nonsense he had in mind wasn't worth… _whatever the hell_ he was doing to Eri."

"Another thing we never found out." Anji went on, unimpressed by her glare, "I don't suppose you gave him an extensive interview before jabbing your sword in his skull, did you?" He shook his head, "a bit of insight into what happened might have helped us…speak to the point."

"He _needed_ to die." She announced gravely, her voice offering no room for argument, "right _then_ and right _there_." Eri gripping her kimono like a life line, Chisaki's rotten eyes, "understand?"

He raised his hands in surrender, "you'll hear no disagreement from me." He puts them down and grips her shoulder, "but I still think you need to talk to her." He pointed rather crudely at her eyepatch, throwing subtly out the window, "of the two of us, you would have the most to teach her about scars."

"She knows about my eye and arm." She said carefully, glaring at Anji's pointed finger until he withdrew it, "you told her about it not too long ago, remember? Gave her that whole history lesson…"

"What I did was give her the bare facts." He shook his head again, "where and why and _when_ , and even than I skimped out on the details." His grip on her shoulder tighten slightly, "whatever I can tell her, it's best if you speak with directly about it, about how you survived those scars."

"You don't _survive_ scars." She spat out quietly, so Eri wouldn't hear, "you survive what _gave_ them to you, you would have me tell her to, what, take pride in dragging herself through a shitty situation?"

"No." He said calmly, unmoved when Baiken's arm rested meaningfully on the hilt of her blade, "I would like you to tell her, first hand, how you handled…" he paused for a moment as she stared at him, "or… _didn't_ handle this, what it made you feel, how you feel about it _now…_ she won't understand it if it comes from me, it will only be real if it comes from _you."_

She stared at him for a long moment, the fire crackling and insects in the trees the only sound between them, before her glare fell and her voice heavy, "what can I teach her Anji?" She felt _exhausted_ at this moment, more than she felt after hours of battle and bloodshed, just by admitting this simple thing, "what can I teach that girl besides how to be angry? How to grab hatred and pain and use them as anchors even as they drown her?" She shrugged his hand off her shoulder, "what good will it do for her, me admitting how painful _this_ was?" She points to her eye weakly, "how it twisted me and shredded me until I was little more than some bloodthirsty animal?"

Anji's eyes widened, his voice soft like moonlight, "Baiken…"

"What will it teach? What will this tell her about the world and what she can do with her life if the only example she has is _me?"_ Her voice is bitter as she looks back at the fire, she begins to lose her appetite as this conversation drags on, she rubs her forehead, and raises her gaze to him one more time, voice quiet, "…she and I aren't the only ones with scars here."

Anji blinks for a moment, before a hand rubs a spot on his forehead covered by his hair, and his other hand grips a spot on his inner thigh, before pats both spots with a bitter chuckle, "yes, that may be the case, but I had someone to fall back on." His voice was soft, his smile fragile but reaching his eyes, "the colony, the people there…helped, when they could." He shook his head with a heavy sigh, "but, you didn't, until I decided to tag along you were…alone on the road, with nothing but your anger to keep you going."

Baiken had nothing to say to that, but she was starting to catch on to the direction his line of thought was taking him.

"Eri is the same." He said firmly, "she had no one in the world to help her, all she could do was keep her head down as she suffered, nothing to fall back on but herself and her own two feet." His fragile smile turned into a mirthless smirk, "until a few months ago, that is."

Baiken groaned as her own words came back to bite her lightly, not on the ass but more on the back of her heel.

"You know better than I how she felt, to be alone with such a burden weighing you down." He put both hands on her shoulders now, keeping her gaze on him, "you want to know what you can teach her?" He waited for her to nod before brought his face closer to hers, foreheads touching, "alright, here's one; you can teach her how to carry that burden, teach her how to straighten her back and put one foot in front of the other, that is a lesson you are uniquely qualified to teach."

She looked away from him, glancing behind herself to see Eri still hugging her knees in silence, ruby eyes staring into the moon filled sky.

"That girl thinks you're made of iron, and that she's made of glass." Anji continued quietly, hands firm and warm on her shoulders, "show her that the both of you, Gear and human, are both of flesh and bone, and that life always leaves its mark on such soft things."

Baiken looks at him, gaze locked with his, before the line of her mouth curves upwards slightly, mind made up.

"I'll tend to the food." He said finally, patting her gently on the shoulder before turning to the cooking fish, glancing at her from the corner of his eye, "you two take as long as you need." He even waves her off as he gives his full attention to their dinner, leaving her to the plan.

Baiken is quiet for a moment, before she drags herself to her feet, groaning all the way up. She turns and starts softly padding towards Eri, hand reaching for her eyepatch haltingly. She finally manages to slip it off her head two steps before she reaches her, the girl turning around to notice her one step after that.

"B-Baiken?"

She wipes her face with her sleeve, she sounds a bit chocked, but not as weepy as Baiken feared.

"Mind if I sit here?" She points to a spot near where Eri lays near the river, the girl mumbling something before scooting to the right to give the samurai more room. Baiken sits a bit heavily on the stones near the shallow bank, sighing deeply as she places her eye patch next to her knee, looking up at the same moon Eri gazed at earlier, "thanks."

Eri mumbled into her knees, eyes glued to the shining water, her hands still around her legs.

A moment of heavy quiet falls between them, Eri continuing her refusal to talk and Baiken trying to figure out a way to start a conversation she isn't sure she knows how to finish, before Eri glances at the samurai and notices the eyepatch on the ground.

Her eyes widen slightly before she looks up at Baiken's face. She can only see the right, unscarred side from where she sits, but soon Baiken catches her looking, and turns her head to meet her gaze head on.

Eri gets her first good look at the angry, pale slash that cut out Baiken's eye. It starts high, a little below her hairline, before gouging downwards a little to the left of the middle of her eyebrow, and ending an inch below her lower lip.

It dug deep into the skin, a canyon running down her face and casting a shadow on itself, the wounded tissue rising up in uneven clumps around it's edges. Eri unconsciously put a hand to her own face, tracing a ghost of the wound with a finger.

"First time I really show this off to you, isn’t it?" Baiken smiled quietly at her, pointing at the scar, Eri flinching and darting her hand away from her face, "a scary sight, isn't it?"

"N-no!" She stammers, in a bit of a panic, "I-I mean it's! It's not-you're not-!"

"It's okay kid." Baiken calms with a raised hand, "it's okay if it creeps you out a little, it's supposed to do that." She puts her hand to the bottom end of the scar, chuckling quietly, "I know it scared the hell out of me when I got my first look at a mirror."

Eri's mouth hangs open, her hands clutching her kimono near her leg, she feels the wound on her shoulder pulse quietly for a moment. "Did…" She starts haltingly, voice unsure before she swallows a lump in her throat, "did it…hurt?"

Baiken keeps running a finger near the bottom of the scar, looking at the water flow near her feet, "yeah, a lot." She places her palm across the whole of it, pressing slightly on the scar tissue, feeling nothing on that side of her face but light pressure, "couldn't sleep for the first few days because of the pain, needed medicine just so turning my head didn't make me faint from it."

Eri bites her lip, her right hand griping her left forearm lightly, fingers tracing over the scars that stitch across her skin, "does it…still hurt?"

Baiken removes her hand from the scar, and looks at her palm, some small, young part of her expecting blood to shimmer in the moon light, but only finds her calloused skin staring back at her, "not anymore." She runs her hand through her hair and turns her body so she faces Eri properly, "now it's just kind of…numb, near my eye," she chuckles, "well, that and I can't _see_ through it, so."

Eri, unfortunately, doesn't laugh, and another veil of uneasy quiet comes down on them both. Baiken bites back a curse and unclenches her jaw, reminding herself to take it easy and let the girl set the pace for this talk.

 _Gentle hand,_ she thinks to herself, over and over, _a_ _gentle hand._

Soon Eri's sight leaves her face, and wonders to her right side, where her empty sleeve hangs limply in the calm night air.

Baiken moves to pull down her top, the cloth smoothing over her skin as she slowly removes it. Soon she's bare from the waist up for Eri to see, her modesty covered with her sarashi, but all the nicks and cuts and dents exposed and plain in the moonlight.

Eri can't keep her eyes from bouncing from cut to cut, the various burn marks and pale strips of flesh where skin was torn and bitten. She's speechless, Baiken guesses she's trying to tell her that she doesn't need to show this to her, but she does. She lifts the stump of her right arm, the flesh gnarled and bark like near where her elbow used to be, the skin patterned with saw-like teeth marks.

"Anji told you about how I got this, right?"

Eri stares wide eyed at the stump, mouth hanging open as her fingers trace her own scars, managing only to numbly nod and whisper, "he-he told me you got hurt a-and…and that you were…" her voice goes weaker as she looks down at her own scars, some measure of shame creeping into her tone, "…angry."

Baiken watches her fingers grip her forearm for a moment, before she looks away to grip at the mangled flesh of her right arm, "yeah, I was angry." She sighs and her own shame disperses into the night air where it can't bother her, "angry at the world, angry the one who did this to me…but, I mostly spent years…being lost."

Eri stares at her again, not understanding what she means.

"I had nothing, no home, no family, no history…no future." She shakes her head as she palms her stump, her fingers catching on the teeth marks the saw left behind, "I was looking for…something, something to make all the pain I went through _mean_ something, that all I suffered wasn't for nothing."

Images of the rain flash in her mind, grey tone streets in the middle of the night, the world expanding and empty as she took another step into it. 

"I never did find that something," she continued, eyes closed, "revenge seemed right for a time, but it always escaped me, and I was lost again." She looked behind her, seeing Anji moving the fish a bit away from the fire, and felt her chest warm slightly, "I found something, something that gave me direction, eventually, but believe me Eri, being lost and confused was how I spent most of my time before you and I met."

"B-but…" She spoke up at last, confusion on every part of her small face, red eyes shining in the night, "you-you're so strong!" She shook her head, tears appearing at the edges of her eyes, "i-if you get confused and scared, you j-just power through, and get angry, and _win,_ and-!" She hiccupped and wiped her face, face pointed to the dirt, "a-and I…I _can't…_ "

Baiken put her hand to the back of Eri's head, pulling her into an embrace, her tears staining her sarashi where she was held, "strong?" She muttered quietly, putting her chin on the crown of Eri's head, "is that what you think, that I'm strong? And that you're weak? Do you really think that there's that kind of distance between us?"

Eri hiccupped miserably, digging her head further into Baiken's chest, her blunt horn poking the side of the samurai's neck.

"We both have scars, Eri." Baiken continued calmly, voice level and steady, the words forming clearly in her mind, not gentle, but true, "both of us were hurt, badly, both of us were lost, I found something, but that was after years, _decades,_ of searching and fumbling and failing to even get on my feet."

Eri sniffed, looking up at her, blood red meeting pale peach as her lips wobbled.

"The mark on my eye?" She leaned her forehead against Eri's, noses touching. "My missing arm, all these hundred wounds you see on me? They didn't make me stronger, they didn't build me up, all they did was hurt me, and yet here I am." She smiled softly at the girl, voice warm, "you know why that is?"

Eri shook her head, at a loss but hanging on her every word.

"It's because I needed to be strong in the first place to survive what gave these scars to begin with." Her smile widened with Eri's eyes, "see what I'm getting at? These scars are more than just a reminder that I was hurt, these scars, every scar…yours too," she takes her hand from Eri's head, and traces her fingers on the subtle pattern of scars on her forearm, "they're proof we _survived,_ you and I, proof that we are _strong_ , that the world tried to break us and it _failed._ "

Eri was crying fully now, tears rolling down her face.

"You're not weak, Eri." Baiken went on softly, fingers still going over Eri's scars, "you're just lost, like I was, and confused, like I was." She smiled again, "you'll find your way Eri, I promise, I know, without a doubt, that you're strong enough."

The little girl wrapped her arms around her, sobbing into her chest as she let out all the emotions that built up over the last couple of days, her cries causing a few birds to fly out of their perches on nearby trees. Baiken simply held her there, glad she was able to say something useful. She listened to Eri cry, and waited for her to calm.

Soon she grew quiet, her tears drying as she leaned on Baiken. The samurai maneuvered the little girl so her back was resting on her chest while she sat in her lap, the both of them staring into the calm water of the stream.

Their faces were blurry in the river, the moon glinting off the water hiding even more, but Baiken thought she felt Eri calm further as she took in the sight. She held Baiken's hand with both of her own, her scars still open to the air, as she eyed her stump one last time, "does…does your arm hurt?"

"Sometimes." Baiken answered lightly, lifting the cut appendage into the air, "though usually not, the most it does is pinch in the cold near where the elbow was." She puts it down and chuckles, "well, that and its itchy like nobody's business."

Eri, finally speaks up, and she does it with a chuckle that makes Baiken hold back a massive sigh of relief, "yeah, mine itch a lot too." She lifts her own arms into the air, for once not hiding them as she scratches along one of the marks.

Baiken actually looks at the scars now that Eri was displaying them, and she had to take another deep breath to keep her composure. They were neat, evenly spaced, and straight. They were made with specific intent and surgical precision. By the look of the skin she could see the cuts went all the way to the bone in some places, and how poorly they healed tells her they barely bothered to bandage her whenever they were done.

The most she could see were stitch marks on some of the larger scars, but besides that she wondered if the bastard even bothered to bandage her after he-

"Baiken?" Eri's small voice knocked her out of her ruminations, turning to see her confused face, "are you okay? You seemed…angry for a second."

The samurai cursed her short temper and took another breath, "no, no Eri I was just…" She glanced at Eri's scar one more time, unclenching her jaw and sighing, "just think about dumb adult stuff, don't worry about it."

Eri nodded, expression doubtful, and went back to staring at the water, she started to say something else when suddenly, her stomach let out a horrifying sound, a deep growl that Baiken was sure scared any animal that was near into running _far away_ from their campsite.

She laughed loudly, though she was sure to wrap her arm around the blushing girl to take the sting out of it, and turn her head back to look at the fire, "hey Anji! Food ready yet?"

"Whenever you are!" He called back cheerfully, skewered fish held aloft in his hand, "get 'em while they're hot!"

Baiken shook her head, getting to her feet as Eri left her lap, putting her kimono top back on as she walked to the fire to join the two already starting to dig into their meal.

Anji had given Eri the biggest fish they caught, the little girl eating heartily like she hasn't all day, her sleeves riding up her elbows with the scars still visible.

"I'm guessing the talk went well?" Anji asked quietly as he handed her the last fish, eyes focused on Eri as she ate, "think she'll look at those scars of hers a bit differently?"

Baiken took a large bite out of her meal, savoring the taste for a moment before she swallowed, "give her time, she's finding her way."

Anji blinked at her for a moment, before he chuckled and went to work on his meal.

So three finished their meal, the fire warm between them, and the stars bright above them.For a moment, all three of them, lost to the wind and fate, were exactly where they wanted to be.

(Baiken realized the day after that she never asked Eri if _her_ scars still hurt, wondering if they could go to a doctor to help with them. Anji could get that Faust character to show up without too much fuss…

Eri shook her head with a smile, "not as much as they used to." Baiken tried not to feel warm at that, but settled for a grumbling nod and to tell Eri that she should speak up if that changed, the little girl nodded happily, and they were on their way.)


End file.
